www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN The Resilience of Life to Astrophysical Events David Sloan 1, Rafael Alves Batista 1 & Abraham Loeb2 Much attention has been given in the literature to the effects of astrophysical events on human and Received: 18 January 2017 land-based life. However, little has been discussed on the resilience of life itself. Here we instead explore Accepted: 5 June 2017 the statistics of events that completely sterilise an Earth-like planet with planet radii in the range 0.5– Published: xx xx xxxx 1.5R⊕ and temperatures of ∼300 K, eradicating all forms of life. We consider the relative likelihood of complete global sterilisation events from three astrophysical sources – supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, large asteroid impacts, and passing-by stars. To assess such probabilities we consider what cataclysmic event could lead to the annihilation of not just human life, but also extremophiles, through the boiling of all water in Earth’s oceans. Surprisingly we find that although human life is somewhat fragile to nearby events, the resilience of Ecdysozoa such as Milnesium tardigradum renders global sterilisation an unlikely event. Within the coming years spectroscopy will likely be employed to identify molecules that are indicative of life in the atmosphere of exoplanets1. In the context of the search for extraterrestrial life, it is useful to establish the nec- essary conditions for life to be present for such observations. Broadly speaking this relies upon two ingredients. The first is an unknown quantity–the fraction of planets on which life begins. The causes of the emergence of life on Earth are not understood, and thus we do not have a complete theory for predicting where life may begin else- where. The second is the probability that life has persisted from its inception to observation. In this work we will show that this is highly likely, as events which could lead to life being completely eradicated are rare. To establish this we break from the usual study in the literature2–6 of the possible paths to ending human life, and broaden the analysis to consider those astrophysical events which could rather remove all life by analysing the most resilient of species–tardigrades. Tardigrades can survive for a few minutes at temperatures as low as −272 °C or as high as 150 °C, and −20 °C for decades7, 8. They withstand pressures from virtually 0 atm in space9 up to 1200 atm at the bottom of the Marianas Trench10. They are also resistant to radiation levels ∼5000–6200 Gy11. For complete sterilisation we must establish the necessary event to kill all such creatures. We consider three types of astrophysical events which could constitute a threat to the continuation of our chosen life forms: large asteroid impact, supernovae (SNe), and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBs and SNe can be deadly due to the lethal doses of radiation and in particular the shock wave associated with the burst. Radiation can cause the depletion of the ozone layer, removing the shield that protects us from cosmic radiation2, 12, 13. The effects of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) on humans and land-based life could be disastrous as the eradication of the ozone layer would leave us exposed to deadly levels of radiation2. However, in such circumstances life could continue below the ground. Significantly, several marine species would not be adversely affected, as the large body of water would provide shielding. Even the complete loss of the atmosphere would not have an effect on species living at the ocean’s floor. The impact of a large asteroid could lead to an “impact winter”, in which the surface of the planet receives less sunlight and temperatures drop. This would prove catastrophic for life dependent on sun- light, but around volcanic vents in the deep ocean life would be unaffected. Similarly, an increase in pressure, or acidity spread across the entirety of the (deep) ocean is an unlikely scenario for extinction. The physical processes by which ocean pressure could significantly increase involve increasing planetary mass; such impacts would first lead to extreme heating. Even following extreme events, spreading acidity through the entire ocean is unlikely. The removal of the atmosphere would also lead to mass extinction. However, following such an event the remain- ing ocean water would form a new atmosphere below which oceans could still form. The energy requirements for total sterilisation of the planet through atmospheric removal are significantly greater than those for boiling the 1Department of Physics - Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Denys Wilkinson Building, Keble Road, OX1 3RH, Oxford, UK. 2Astronomy Department, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to R.A.B. (email: [email protected]) SCIENTIFIC REPORTS | 7: 5419 | DOI:10.1038/s41598-017-05796-x 1 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ oceans, so the threat of atmospheric removal is contained within that of oceans boiling. We are therefore led to consider death due to heat or radiation. Analysis To raise the entire ocean temperature by T requires a deposit of EM= oT wherein Mo is the ocean mass and the specific heat capacity of water. In order to increase the temperature of the entirety of the Earth’s oceans we need to introduce a large amount of thermal energy. The total mass of water in the oceans is around 1.35 × 1021 kg. The specific heat capacity of water is 4184 J kg−1 °C−1 so we require 5.6 × 1024 J to raise the ocean temperature by 1 °C. Thus the tardigrade with a tolerance of up to 100 °C would survive until around 5.6 × 1026 J were depos- ited into the ocean. This is a lower bound–such heat would not be evenly distributed, being it most likely to be deposited in the upper ocean. To provide a conservative bound, we seek to minimise the depth of the deepest ocean on any planet–a uniform distribution of oceans across the planet’s surface. When ocean mass is small com- pared to that of the planet, the depth of the ocean is approximately 2/31/3 αρ Mp D =. πρ1/3 (36) w (1) 3 Here ρ = 3Mp/(4πRp ) is the average planet density, α the fraction of the mass in ocean (on Earth −4 Mo ≈ 2.3 × 10 M⊕) and ρw the density of water. Most of Earth’s water is contained within rocks. To remain con- servative, we consider only the mass of liquid water in the oceans. There may exist planets that are almost entirely water (α ≈ 1), however for life as we know it, we focus on Earth-like planets with oceans on the surface of a rocky planet. We give these explicitly as we will assume they are broadly unchanged between planets. For the Earth, this implies that there must be an ocean of at least 2.5 km in depth. This is far shallower than the deepest points, how- ever it will constitute a lower bound. The intensity of gamma rays is attenuated by interaction with matter by a factor exp(−μD), wherein D is the depth and μ the attenuation coefficient. This varies based on the material and the frequency of the incident radiation. The tardigrade is capable of withstanding over 6000 Gy (enough to endow every kilogram of material with 6000 J of energy). If the ocean depth is greater than log (700)/µ (the latter figure being the ratio of the energy deposit per unit mass required to boil water to that to kill a tardigrade) the water above will be boiling. In fact, if we consider a sufficient radiative flux to kill a tardigrade at depth D, the total 2 µD energy deposited upon the planet is at least ER=−6000πµp(1e )/ . If our oceans are more than a few metres deep, this exceeds the threshold energy at which the oceans would boil before radiation would kill the tardigrade. We therefore consider temperature increase as the primary source of sterilisation. Large asteroids are the leading candidate for causing of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction which took place 65 million years ago, annihilating approximately 75% of species on the planet leaving the Chicxulub crater. This event devastated larger land animals. Of those with masses over 25 kg only a few ectothermic species survived. However, around 90% of bony fish species survived14 and deep ocean creatures were largely unaffected by the event. We estimate an upper bound for the energy deposited by an asteroid of mass Ma as being its free-fall energy 2 2 from infinity to the surface of the planet E = 1/2Ma(v∞ + ve ), where vep= 2/GM Rp is the escape velocity of the −1 15 planet (ve ≈ 11.2 kms for Earth), and v∞ is given by Öpik’s close encounter theory . In order to raise the ocean’s temperature by T, we require an asteroid of mass 2αT = . Ma 22Mp vv∞ + e (2) To annihilate tardigrades on Earth we require a mass over ∼1.7 × 1018 kg. The largest observed asteroids in the Solar System are Vesta and Pallas, with masses of 2.7 × 1020 kg and 2.2 × 1020 kg respectively. There are only 17 other known asteroids of sufficient mass, and a few dwarf planets, the most massive ones being Eris and Pluto, whose masses are 1.7 × 1022 kg and 1.3 × 1022 kg respectively. We reiterate that our estimate of the required energy is conservative–it is likely that it would take a significantly more massive impact as ocean heat would only be a fraction of the total energy.